Power outages and their effect on Houston radio

[b-turner]

I have read through this thread and find some very interesting points. Of all my years in radio I have found a surprise or something unexpected is always the issue when radio should 'step up to the plate'.

When I was in a small market, one summer morning when I turned on the water faucet the tap water was brown, a muddy brown. At the station we were getting so many calls, everybody was fielding them. You had people yelling about trying to get through to the city but getting a busy signal. Callers were yelling at us. The city issued a boil order. We aired that about every 15 minutes. People complained we weren't telling them enough. Our news director couldn't get through to the city either and those 'special' numbers weren't being answered.

None of us at the station knew anything until the city faxed us. That fax had very limited information: we don't know what happened and until you hear differently, boil the water.

With the power outage during the big freeze, the public and everyone else didn't know the power outage would happen. The radio station was just as surprised and just as prepared as the average family was. And during such events, details always lag far behind as the people that tell us what is going on scramble to find out what is happening as well. They're doing their job trying to 'fix' or find a solution. Talking to media is far down the list because they're in the thick of trying to resolve a problem.

My point is radio has no crystal ball into the future or any insider information. There was no way to prepare for what was never expected. If you were in a car accident today, I would not be complaining why you didn't know this was going to happen or why you hadn't pre-arranged for a rental car that morning. It was a surprise or an unexpected event. You never expected it to happen. Are you holding radio to a different level? You can say TV stations did a good job. I'm sure those with news departments did. How much information did the ME TV affiliate air or that TV station airing a Shopping channel? Wasn't the information TV provided done only by those stations with a news department that already had people on duty building that day's newscasts? If you were the midday jock at the classic rock station explain how you would have handled things differently. My point is you can only prepare for the expected and potential problem, not the one nobody anticipated.

 

[2Speakers]

No. Someone claimed that the Senior Rd tower never lost power throughout the blackout (meaning the generators were never used).

It's not a farfetched claim since a few areas in Houston didn't lose power at all. A friend of mine only lost power for a few hours at most.

Not far fetched at all. Senior Road never lost power, and there's a really simple explanation for that.

The rolling blackouts were being managed via smart meters. Senior Road doesn't have one. You can't run that much power through the small contactor in a smart meter.

It's the same reason most high rise office buildings in Houston never lost power either.

 

[xmtrland]

I'm sure if the facility in question was asked to remove them selves from the grid they would have turned on the generator and ran on generator power. Is any one on this board privy to conversations between the sight manager and the local utility?

No smart meter needed for that, just a working phone. Plus there may be other services on the tower such as public safety that needed power. I'm sure if the facility were to be asked or told to get off the grid they would have. If they did not comply the local utility could pull the fusses to the tower farm and guess what, they would be back on the air with the generator. We talk about armchair program directors and see examples of that on this board. This is a case of armchair site managers.

 

[AnyHuman]

The rolling blackouts were being managed via smart meters. Senior Road doesn't have one. You can't run that much power through the small contactor in a smart meter.

Funny, because in my area one of the stations went down for 30 minurtes or so, I messaged them letting them know they were off and got a reply back about a rolling blackout at the transmitter site. The station in question was 7000 watts, and that's a lot less than 100,000 watts from multiple stations so that might be why.

 

[2Speakers]

I'm sure if the facility in question was asked to remove them selves from the grid they would have turned on the generator and ran on generator power. Is any one on this board privy to conversations between the sight manager and the local utility?

No smart meter needed for that, just a working phone. Plus there may be other services on the tower such as public safety that needed power. I'm sure if the facility were to be asked or told to get off the grid they would have. If they did not comply the local utility could pull the fusses to the tower farm and guess what, they would be back on the air with the generator. We talk about armchair program directors and see examples of that on this board. This is a case of armchair site managers.

There was no call to the site manager.

And if there had been, he probably would have invited the utility to drop the fuses at the pole out by the road, because going into the site with that much ice almost 2,000’ in the air would have been extremely dangerous.

The electric reliability council here has a program where they can order large commercial consumers off the grid by remote. For participation, they get a discounted electricity rate year-round.

Several Houston broadcasters used to participate in the program, including Senior Road.

A few years ago, they were all kicked out of the program because their diesel generators were deemed too polluting.

 

[KTN Corp]

There's a missing element of essential information here regarding whether (or not) the Missouri City broadcast facilities lost power from the grid.
If they did lose power and went on emergency generators, that was no problem for other electricity customers.
If they did not lose power, some would say they were wasting power if broadcasting non-essential programming.

This Newsweek article has a satellite photo of nighttime Houston before and during the storm.
Satellite photos show extent of Texas power outages from space

The heat map shows active lines feeding the Missouri City tower farm. The major business districts (TV & major radio broadcast studios) had power. That's why I was infuriated when I encountered the NASA satellite photos of Houston being posted all over the web!

Without reliable mobile data service, radio was the only method of communication during the blackout. Most Houstonians were warming up, charging their cell phones, and trying to find information on AM/FM while idling their vehicles. Harvey is probably the last event that showed how indispensable broadcast media was during emergencies.

The rolling blackouts were being managed via smart meters. Senior Road doesn't have one. You can't run that much power through the small contactor in a smart meter.

I think you have too much confidence that the independent Texas power grid meets developed country standards. Wiring was manually plugged and unplugged.

'I lost my best friend': How Houston's winter storm went from wonderland to deadly disaster

Monday, Feb. 15, 2:24 a.m. 24 degrees​

But because of the amount of power that needed to be cut, and the speed at which CenterPoint had to act, the utility determined it couldn’t automatically rotate outages without compromising the Houston grid.

Those without power were left in the dark until CenterPoint could send crews out to manually rotate outages, turning off neighborhood circuits by hand.

Eventually, more than 1 million Houston homes were plunged into darkness, nearly all the outages due to the lack of power on the grid. Fewer than 100,000 customers lost power because of downed power lines or transmission problems.

Monday, Feb. 15, noon. 21 degrees​

As the day progressed, Easton dispatched specialized CenterPoint crews, called Tiger Teams, on treacherous icy roads to operate the “black start path” substations, in case the entire system failed. Other teams began manually isolating hospitals, police and fire stations, so they could turn off power to more homes to fulfill ERCOT’s orders to cut more power.